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The 21-year-old won gold at the Ontario Technological Skills Competition and the Canadian Nationals Skill Competition for Millwright in May. He has also been hired on at ESSO Imperial Oil in the Northwest Territories.

Cinq-Mars, who grew up in Cayuga, said it was his shop teachers at Cayuga Secondary School who told him to consider college instead of university engineering.

“I would be sitting in math class thinking about shop. I just found that trades were my passion.”

That passion runs in the family. His father Phil Cinq-Mars owns Cinq-Mar Electric and Remi Gitnac, and a grandfather owns an auto service business.

Joseph chose Mohawk's manufacturing engineering technician-automation program because it was so broad. He enrolled in 2008. He said he could have specialized, but he liked everything, so he chose to pursue millwright as a profession.

Richard Dupp taught Cinq-Mars during the four years he was at Mohawk and submitted him and another student in the Ontario Technological Skills Competition. Dupp said Cinq-Mars was one of his top students.

“He was just being a model student throughout the entire three years,” said Dupp. “Someone who comes prepared, someone who puts in extra time, someone who studies hard, and is successful because of it.”

After a year long co-op with Dofasco, he was told that they wouldn't be able to hire him on due to their budget. After a job search, ESSO Imperial Oil hired Cinq-Mars and he's now moved to Norman Wells, N.WT. He got the job before the provincial and national competitions.

“They allowed him to do the provincial, and when they found out that he won gold at provincials, they allowed him to go ahead and compete in the national,” said Dupp.

“And obviously they feel they chose wisely in hiring him.”

As well as teaching Cinq-Mars most of his millwright courses, Dupp was also his mentor for the provincial competition and then prepared him for the national competition.

Both competitions included machining on a lathe, building pneumatic circuits, and putting together mechanical components and combining bolts and chains.

For the national competition, competitors were given an idea of what they would be doing during the two days of the contest. In preparation, Dupp said that Cinq-Mars put in about 16 hours of extra time in the shop preparing.